About GAIA

Gothenburg Artificial Intelligence Alliance (GAIA) is a non-profit association promoting an interest in artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and data engineering in Gothenburg and the surrounding area. We were founded in October 2018 by merging the organisation behind the Machine Learning and Data Science (GBG) Meetup and the first GAIA conference, held in April 2018.

GAIA offers knowledge-sharing and networking through regular events. We hold Meetups roughly bi-monthly and arrange our conference annually in the spring. Between events, our members can engage through the GAIA Slack.

The GAIA manifest

We believe in the power of together. Right here at our back yard. And out there in the vast universe. We believe we have the courage to be fantastic but not perfect. We believe in sharing progress and instigating change. Change for a better tomorrow.
We are curious, hungry and perhaps a little bit crazy.
We are GAIA.

Togetherness

We believe in the power of together. We believe in listening, sharing and lifting each other. We don’t believe that lasting change is created merely by individuals but by all of us together.

Curiosity

We are curious. About each other and about the world in which we live and work. And of course we are constantly curious about new techniques and exciting collaborations.

Progress

We always strive to be at the front edge, where progress is made. However we don’t see it as a purpose in itself to be first. Our main focus is that what we do must be good for all of us, thus creating faith in the future.

Our board

Our board, elected at the Annual Meeting, is in charge of running the organisation. If you want to help, contact us about talking or hosting an event, organising the annual conference, sponsoring, or anything else.

The history of GAIA

The roots of the Gothenburg Artificial Intelligence Alliance trace back to 2014—only two years after AlexNet by Krizhevsky, Sutskever, and Hinton ushered in the modern era of artificial intelligence—when the meetup group Machine Learning and Data Science (GBG) started in Gothenburg by local enthusiasts.

The community grew, and the Meetup group changed organisers as the years passed. By 2017, the interest was so huge that it became a problem, with typical 60–80-seat meetups filling up in five minutes. Thus, organisers Jakob Andersson and Daniel Langkilde had the idea to try something bigger: an actual conference. Josef Lindman Hörnlund, Amanda Bowald (then Nilsson), Josefin Scott (then Ondrus), and Elin Romare joined to form our first conference committee. We picked the name GAIA (yes, we decided on the abbreviation first) during one of our initial planning breakfasts at the coffee shop da Matteo at Magasinsgatan in Gothenburg.

The first GAIA Conference was a huge success. We sold all 500 tickets and filled the largest conference hall at the Lindholmen Conference Centre. 17 speakers across two tracks and 11 partners made for an exciting start.

Everything was still privately organised, and the success made it apparent that we needed to start an organisation and get a proper bank account. So, during the autumn of 2018, we formally founded the Gothenburg Artificial Intelligence Alliance. We wrote our by-laws and moved the meetup group and the conference under the umbrella of our new non-profit association. The rest is history.